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<title>Given, Unseen (4x02) by Zofiecfield</title>
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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25772296">Given, Unseen (4x02)</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zofiecfield/pseuds/Zofiecfield'>Zofiecfield</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Wynonna Earp (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/F, Feelings, Gen, One Shot, Short One Shot</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 06:40:56</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>585</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25772296</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zofiecfield/pseuds/Zofiecfield</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Nicole Haught sacrificed everything, willing gave all she had.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Waverly Earp &amp; Nicole Haught, Waverly Earp/Nicole Haught</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>18</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Given, Unseen (4x02)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p>Catching up has a shelf life. After too long, the details fade and the small efforts and trials that made each day pass cease to hold their weight. An elevator pitch for five hundred days of loneliness and terror wouldn't sell the script. </p><p>That night, around the table, she fills them in as best she can. They're full of questions, and hungry to make plans. They allude to time in the Garden, answer her when she asks, but they are here and now. Answers are too brief to write her into the story they've already left behind.</p><p>She is part and apart.</p><p>Adrenaline has dropped away and in its place, panic rising. She forces down a glass of water. They look at her as she pales, as her eyes lose focus and breaths grow shallow. But their gaze doesn't seem to stick. The draw of the new story starting is too strong. They look, but don't see.</p><p>Ugliness bubbles up, and leaves her mouth bitter. The hurt and fear and longing, stuffed down while she survived, while she waited. Reflux, clawing up the back of her throat.</p><p>Sacrifice, no matter how freely made, no matter how open the heart, begs to be recognized. Begs to be named. Under sustained strain, unrelenting, selflessness gives way to doubt. As you've given, who would give for you?</p><p>Disgusted with her thoughts, so aware of the lies they sing, the deceit of anxiety and panic. But they threaten to overwhelm her, muting voices and dulling her vision at the edges, and she can't push them back. 574 endless days of surviving, holding the world together as she waited. 574 nights of terror and terrible longing. She's been worn so thin.</p><p>The time was hers to lose, not theirs. It slid by them unnoticed, as she spit and fought and begged for each moment to pass. They had been weightless and she had born gravity's pull on them all. They were gone, and the load was hers alone.</p><p>She can touch each ill thought as it rises, tell it truth and make it pale at the edges, but the next is hot behind it, and she's losing ground. They went through hell and dragged themselves home, she knows. She knows, she knows. They've each laid down their lives for her, time and again, as she has for them. They are family, and she is whole in their company. But.</p><p>Left behind, apart from their struggle and triumph. Hundreds of thousands of moments grieving, without being grieved. Of hoping without being hoped for. Running perpendicular on a parallel track, to exhaustion and far beyond it.</p><p>Their role was to fight, hers to defend. But she had poured all of herself into those barricades, and left nothing to defend herself. No one left to cover her, no one to give any rest.</p><p>They had torn through hell and found their way home, but hell wears many faces.</p><p>Surrounded, and more lonely than she had been in eighteen months alone. Unseen. She rises from the table and slips out. Leans against the bathroom sink, spits bile, presses her hands to the ceramic, bracing against the onslaught.</p>
<hr/><p><br/>
<em>At that table, as her heart had been dropping, her vision too dim to catch it, another heart had seen.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>The door clicks shut.  Arms pull her close and hold steady as the cracks give way and she shatters.  Whispered words cross the time cruelly lost, time selflessly given.  They build a bridge to carry her home.</em>
</p><p> </p>
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